Passing the Candle

Tristan Simon, the Czar of Henderson and soon to be the earl of everything you put in your mouth, has sold his successful nightclub Candle Room to his general manager Tommy "D" Dondlinger (formerly of the allegedly terminal Hard Rock) and Bar manager Shawn Egerton. No price was disclosed.

"I just made the decision to get out of the nightclub business," says Simon, who closed his upscale nightclub Sense late last summer due to disappointing financial performance. But wasn't Candle Room a cash cow? "The company's grown, and we have a number of cash cows now," he assures. "We're basically choosing to focus on our core business, which is the restaurant business."

To that end, Simon's firm Consilient Restaurants (so named for a book by famed Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, which more than suggests this is not your papa's restaurant company) is expanding Fireside Pies. The pizza place will reach to Grapevine and (if real estate can be found) the Park Cities; the Shops at Legacy edition opened late last year.

Consilient is also opening The Porch in March (after it slipped a year behind schedule) and sketching out a new restaurant concept, as well as lining up ducks for a potential new project, possibly outside Texas shores. Not bad for a Duke grad baptized in a Cool River. --Mark Stuertz